Managerial Learning from Theatre
“All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That’s what makes theatre live. That’s why it persists.”-Stephen Sondheim
1. Modelling of an Idea “Individualism”
So in my theatre, the single word of theme which was given to me is “INDIVIDUALISM”. The word Individualism indicates the belief that the needs of each person are more important than the needs of the whole society or group.
So in terms of the modelling of an idea, by taking the word “Individualism”, I tried to use it in terms of the “Individualism vs. Collectivism”. So while modelling the idea I emphasis to develop my theatre theme which shows that every person loves to talk about helping the society but when it comes to action they becomes selfish and always tries to put their selfish interest first and then other things.
So in short my theme of play loves to talk about collectivism but when it comes in to action suddenly it turns into individualism.
I found that theatre helps them develop the confidence that’s essential to speaking clearly, lucidly, and thoughtfully. Theatre has a great hand on enhancing the oral communication skills and we can find our voice through the play by acting onstage teaches you how to be comfortable speaking in front of large audiences, and some of your theatre classes will give you additional experience talking to groups. Furthermore, your work on crews has taught you that clear, precise, and well-organized oral communications are best.
Now I have idea in my hand of individualism but the communication of this idea to my team members is necessary part of any successful theatre. So here concept of shared vision and shared value is introduced.
So for the development of shared value and shared vision, I asked my every team member and did brainstorming that what idea or incidences came into their mind when they think about the individualism and how influencing idea it is. So every team member came up with different ideas and incidences which actually reflect the theme of individualism and then we started filtering the idea and focusing on most influencing and appealing idea or incident of individualism which strikes the most. So by mutual consent we came up to some set of ideas on individualism and whole theatre team agreed on it to work out and that is how I developed my shared vision and shared value.
2. Envisioning the play:
In terms of the envisioning the play I know that “The first step toward creating an improved future is developing the ability to envision it.” So envisioning the end is enough to put the means in motion. I also envisioned my play from head to tail and by deciding the flow and sequence of actions which can best speak about the individualism. We decided to effects of individualism present in the society. So in my action plan, we decided the set of sequence of showing different social issues which is contributed by individualism. We decided our sequence of incidences in such a way that after every incidence the degree of emotions and degree of influence in audience will trigger and it involves audience more into it.
Yes!! Because of the good envisioning the play, our final performance also matched with that vision that we had at a pre- production stage. But if I am to rate our final performance against the pre-production planning, I will rate it 4.5/5.
3. Sharing of idea and vision and possible resistance to it
In terms of sharing idea with the team member, I played a role of listener than a speaker. I never tried to impose only those idea or incidences which are coming across my mind. I motivated and encouraged my whole team to come up with different ideas of individualism. I listened and welcomed each and every thought from my team member and analyse the possibility and relevancy of each idea from my team member and by analysing the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of each idea, we finally selected some incidences which reflects the feeling of individualism in the society.
By this way I share my ideas with team and thought about big possibility of doing stage in two hours.
Selection of an idea and convincing the team member for that particular idea was the resistance I faced. Although I welcomed each and everyone’s idea of individualism, but when it comes to selection, we need to give logical rational for choosing a one option compare to others. Sometimes it’s hard to convince people to leave their own idea and work on other person idea. I also faced this situation in my team.
4. Design and production
The process of design and production of our play was more and dynamic. As we know that before designing the action plans and production we must be aware about each team member unique competency and capability. As we can’t assign a role of emotions to the person who looks funny or vice versa or we can’t assign a role of strongly person to the person who looks like low in motivation or lazy. So in our design and production of the play, we decide our characters and give them role by knowing and focusing on their unique ability and capacity. So they can come up with their best performance by their heart. Yes!! In this phase of designing and production, we learnt a lot from the earlier mistakes. Previously we assigned the role without looking the personal unique ability of any team member, but after sometime we understand the value of it and assigned role of character based on the team member’s ability and strength. So there are lot of learning from the earlier mistakes.
5.Enabling others to act
I enable others to act by telling them to lead by examples and telling them inspiration story. I used a way of story-telling to communicate my idea properly and enable them to act on the shared vision.
I also celebrated completion of the performance before performance by sitting together on the lunch table as a whole team and interact the word of motivation and inspiration for the future success. By exchanging the words of motivation and inspiration after rehearsal and before performance psychologically helps my team member to perform best on the stage. I found because of this motivation interaction, my team was full of confidence and had already developed a guts to present best on the stage.
6.Leadership Lessons from the Play
Yes!! I learned many leadership lessons from this play.
By play I learn leadership which improve helps us in leading ourselves. As we learn leading ourselves better we are also able to inspire others to do the same. This contributes to the eco system and helps an organisation to create culture of growth by leading self.
I also learned to lead any project from the start to finish, in which we have to create a concept from scratch, and then refine it so that it can articulate into the compelling vision and then we have to select best person to perform a specific role among team and have to manage everyone on the basis of available time and budget.
One of the most valuable things acting taught me is self-awareness. In theatre you have to be conscious of everything that is going on around you. You must listen to the other actors in order to respond appropriately, especially when someone “misses” a line or a movement, which can happen even with fine, experienced actors. And, you have to be constantly aware of the physical space you are moving through.
I also learned to how to manage a dynamic team in an effective way. I learned how to manage a collaborative manner of the team to achieve an effective experience by managing the whole team in such a way for common goal without hurting an individual sentiment of the team members.
I also learned how to envision and implement big picture thinking into actions. By envisioning the big picture and by effectively communicating our shared vision and shared value to team member, I learned to convert envisioned big picture into reality by this theatre activity.
In the movie “It’s wonderful life”, an angel from the heaven helps and convince a compassionate but despairingly frustrated young blood businessman by showing life would have been like if he never existed.
George is a good man who sacrificed his dream and his youth on behalf of the citizens of his small town. By showing the attributes of the good obedient son,he also inherited his father loan’s business and give up his dream of travelling the world.George also didn’t accept the proposal of selfish banker Mr. Potter and decided to not sell his business to protect the poor community and also offers a mean to the town people to afford to buy their own house. So in the movie, George showcased as a good man. But when his uncle looses US $ 8,000.00 which are stolen by Mr. Potter, George finds himself in very difficult situation and decided to commit suicide, as he believed he worth more dead than alive.So we can say that “it’s difficult to be good”. It’s not at all easy to live your life being a good man.
crew and he was also volunteering to be taken as a hostage in exchange to his ship. On the other hand, Muse shown the opposite behaviour, so when he caught by the U.S. Navy, he told his crew to free him whatever they have to do in exchange.
of the crew member, Shane took the lead of the crew. But in case of Muse, when he left to board the US Navy ship, his followers were confused to take decisions and lead the others.
Inspiration Leader: In the movie Invictus, Nelson Mandela shows a behaviour of true inspiration leader by expressing appealing vision, focussing efforts and also behaving in ways to energise followers. These are the attributes of the Inspiration leader showcased in the movie Invictus.
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